The Navy sent the USS Cole to the Gulf of Aden following an attack earlier this week on a Saudi warship off Yemen by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, a U.S. defense official told Fox News Friday.

The destroyer is the same warship that suffered heavy damage in an Al Qaeda bombing attack in Yemen in 2000 that killed 17 sailors.

The Navy’s move also came as the Trump administration on Friday imposed sanctions on 13 people and a dozen companies in response to Iran’s recent ballistic missile test.

Trump tweeted Friday that “Iran is playing with fire – they don’t appreciate how `kind’ President Obama was to them. Not me!”

The Cole has been sent to an area off Yemen where U.S. warships were attacked in October, resulting in a retaliatory Tomahawk cruise missile strike from a U.S. destroyer against Houthi radar installations in on Yemen’s coastline.

The Pentagon says the Houthis have placed mines in the water near the entrance to the strategic Bab al-Mandab strait.

Another reason the Cole is being sent to the area is to maintain freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and through the strait, Fox News reports.

President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, said this week the administration was putting Iran “on notice” for its missile test Sunday and for supporting the Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The Houthis targeted a Saudi frigate off the coast of Yemen Monday, but the attack may have been meant for an American warship, two defense officials told Fox News.